IRAC Brief
Learning Team B
QRB/501
January 26, 2015
Amy Ginsburg
CSR and industry relationships: A descriptive study The purpose of this study is to determine if investments in CSR and IT can become a competitive advantage and if so do they complement or oppose one another. Empirical studies do show that investments in IT and CSR have led to competitive advantages across industries. The data used for this study was from the KLD database. The following statement relates to the relevance of the data collected; “The largest 3000 U.S. publicly traded companies have been covered by KLD since 2003; the S&P 500 and the Domini 400 Social Index companies have been in the database since 1991. The companies are covered by independent, professional analysts who apply the same criteria to all firms, consistently over time” (Anderson, Hong, & Zhang, 2011). Sample data from over 3,800 firms were collected for this study. Sums of the strengths were taken from each company from the data. Additionally the sums of the other areas were also calculated from 14 different areas. These areas are: “community relations (total) strengths, community relations (total) concerns, corporate governance (total) strengths, corporate governance (total) concerns, and so on” (Anderson, Hong, & Zhang, 2011). The statistical analyses concluded that the industries are too broad and need further classification. No relationship was found between investments in CSR and IT.

Title of Article?
The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship among organizational learning practices and innovativeness with a company’s ability to maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. “Studies were conducted to analyze the significance of organizational learning and innovativeness to non-financial performance of NGOS.” As the market becomes more competitive and saturated, researchers see the importance of determining what factors boost longevity of organizations and how they have kept their competitive advantage in the market. This study consists of 120 participants that were observed over a one month period of time through a random sampling procedure. The expectations of the study were to prove that there is a strong correlation between employee’s empowerment, company innovativeness, and behaviors on the performance of organizations in the NGO sector. There is increased pressure to maximize on the different qualifications and characteristics that help boost organizational performance. “The study considered several factors: employee empowerment, effective strategic leadership, behavioral and cognitive change, and innovative company culture.” ( Imran and Nisar, 2014) The method used to obtain the results was a survey questionnaire. The NGO sector was chosen because researchers believed that not enough literature was accessible related to the topic.” (Imran and Nasir 2014) There were 70 females and 50 males surveyed with most participants ranging from 26-44. The mean scores and standard deviation results were documented for several variables: organizational learning, innovativeness, organizational performance,, employee empowerment, leadership that reinforce learning and behavioral and cognitive changes. (Imran and Nisasr, 2014) “Learning and innovativeness were found to positively correlate with organizational performance based on the results of the analysis which indicated r= 0.691, p<0.05 and r=0.616, p<0.05 which proved significance of 1%.” Researchers tested reliability of the study using Cronbach’s Alpha test which yielded a 81.5% relativity on the regression and analysis results. As hypothesized, both variables, organizational learning practices and innovativeness, have a positive influence on organizational performance.

Does design matter?
The reasoning behind the study is to understand how design affects smartphone usage and how said usage relates to design features, function, as well as inferential and expressive beliefs. The research